There is something to be said for the way your smile lights up passageways in my heart that have long been darkened

I remember the smell of your soap and the taste of honeycomb cereal and the feel of your soft hands protecting my small hands on the way across the road to my kindergarten classroom

And here today I sit across from you and I want to thank you for every cut you cleaned, and every tear you wiped, and the way you taught me to smile no matter who kicked me down, but I have to remember that you are now someone else

And to you, I am as good as a stranger
To you, we share no memories
No quiet mornings or warm afternoons

And I sit here today and I'm smiling and you're smiling but all is hollow because you cannot place my face in your photo frames of memory and I cannot help but curse myself for letting you get away from me

And these diseases of the mind are the silent terrorists, waging wars on memories and leaving ticking time bombs with tired families

I don't cry
I don't cry
I don't cry

Every Sunday afternoon you spent carving me into the person I am is gone, and I am coming to realize that without your love, this being you forged is wooden and hollow

You mean more to me than anything in the world
But you don't know who I am
I am gone to you

And every Sunday afternoon, I tell you who I am
And you smile and nod, and you're as kind as can be
But you are convinced, you've never met me



I have to smile
No matter who or what kicks me down

it is 2:23 am
the fan is set on high, despite the fact that the weather outside is -20°
fans are good for these sorts of things
white noise
drowning out the silence
the thoughts the beer brings

thoughts of fools in love in coffee shops
and cynics in tears in basement rooms
and once brave men in coffins

the dog chews on a rawhide bone

and I unbraid my hair
untangling each knot with trembling fingers

I undress slowly
removing each piece of clothing like a memory

I put on that shirt I bought for you

I crawl into bed
smearing plum lips and black eyes on an off-white pillowcase

and I think of once great loves of cynics
I think of coffins
I think of you in light blue

She is looking to her lap
While he gets up with hesitation
She is pulling at a run in her floral skirt
His eyes wander to those daisies for a moment
Then he turns,     & takes each step   further        further        FURTHER

"Wait! Will you please just wait?" she screams

"What do you want from me?" his voice screams... shakes.    with confusion,    betrayal,       exhaustion?    

"Please, just wait" she pleads through tears that feel so foreign on her skin

His eyes meet hers, trace her face, continue down to that run in that floral skirt
He has a nature to love, but a right to hate, to hurt, to avenge

"No." he says

And he is gone
And there is no door that leads back into that room, it seems
That room was a moment, and it passed
And it is gone
And he is gone
AND IT DIDN'T WORK
It didn't work
That floral skirt

I don't have the voice for spoken word
It shakes and it s-s-stammers
And I'm not too sure if it's too high or too low
But it's missing something

There's a power that wont pass these lips
And a commanding tone that can't quite rally its troops

This is no smooth, jazz inspired tongue
This tongue has been bitten
There's a metallic feeling of blood and it's pooling into deadweights
So, on this tongue lies a thousand pounds of blood stronger than feeling

And I can't quite get it out
When these words are weighed down,
These feelings sink back into my chest and the metallic taste passes these lips and forms a deadbolt

I don't have the voice for spoken word
It shakes and it s-s-stutters
And I'm not quite sure if it's just an extension of myself
Where the feeling stays inside and the blood collects
And there's always something missing

so that one day


I'll be inadequate in fourteen different languages

Quiet compliance to daylight, loud taunts of haunted night
Demons which crawl, scratches on walls
Darkness the swindler, light the betrayer

Heart knocking, knocking, knocking
Breaths heaving, heaving, heaving

CRACK

Mind, decaying floorboards, one step     collapse

Every time I open The Roominghouse Madrigals,
an estranged part of me comes back with blistered hands and a heart so heavy it's like Wile E. Coyote has it attached to a chain hanging off the edge of a cliff that's beginning to crumble

And every time I open The Roominghouse Madrigals,
a peculiar part of me leaves without warning to wander and turn over some things in its head like I've got multiple personalities and a few years from now it'll return and kick Jane out and insist I am Mary

And every time I open The Roominghouse Madrigals,
There is a deep sorrow within me that I think I mistake for love

But I'm getting ahead of myself-
The Roominghouse Madrigals is a selection of poems by the drunken poet Charles Bukowski
The Roominghouse Madrigals is a selection of poems about sadness, madness, genius and solitude
The Roominghouse Madrigals is                                       a young girl's first broken love

I first fell in love with it on the floor
I first fell in love with it on the floor of the balcony
I first fell in love with it on the floor of the balcony of the book shop
I first fell in love with it on the floor of the balcony of the book shop where I first fell in love

Simply you see, The Roominghouse Madrigals is a selection of poems that washed like rebirth
The first time, the first poem, the Brave Bull, it was a sudden clarity with a taste of joyous drunkenness
That first time, that first poem, the Brave Bull, it was cured amnesia reminding me of all the things I forgot I ever was and a psychedelic mushroom, dressed as a fortune cookie, dressed as a book of poems, that told me what I would be, and so I became it

And if reincarnation is real maybe the world's so messed up because it's the same group of idiots being born over and over again to be raised by the idiots they raised

Because the first time I opened The Roominghouse Madrigals,
I tasted life and death simultaneously

And I keep it near to my heart but not near to my bed should anyone find it and think I'm a perverted and miserable girl who can't help but fall apart every time she mouths the words some dead drunk poet weeped into a keyboard with curses crashing into black keys like those tears, still warm & ever so salty
But I am and I do and I keep it near to my heart      like a first broken love